Evidence is now out that Nigeria's polymer bank note supplier, Securency International Pty Ltd, offered Vietnamese officials $5million dollars bribe to get the country to switch from paper money to the polymer notes.
According to The Age, the Australian newspaper that first broke the story of the bribery scandal, after the success in Vietnam, the company proceeded to begin talks to establish business in Nigeria, another country similar to Vietnam in corruption tolerance status. Vietnam and Nigeria both occupy the 121st position on the Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index.
For Securrency, which is being investigated for allegedly bribing Nigerian officials, this twin revelation that it offered bribe to secure its Vietnam contract, and that once this was concluded it immediately commenced negotiations to penetrate the Nigerian market is bound to come as a setback.
Bribery in Vietnam
A middle man, to whom bribes were paid in Vietnam, has now been named; Anh Ngoc Luong, recieved payment disguised as commissions but much higher than the expected rate. Mr. Luong, with his company, Company for Technology and Development (CFTD), allegedly received about $12million for onward payment into secretive accounts in Switzerland.
"Securency hired Mr. Luong because of his high-level government connections, and he has been Securency's man on the ground and chief government liaison in Vietnam for several years," the paper, published today, said.
In a manner typical to the case in Nigeria, after the payments into the accounts in tax havens, the country announced a change in its bank note substrate.
"In 2002...Vietnam's central bank formally announced the switch to polymer money."
In 2007, when investigations began into the Securency-Vietnam case, Securency, which is part owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), attempted to explain the payments away as payments for translation services.
"A lot of the [CFTD's] roles in the early stages were to do with interpreting and translating... so that is the primary role they play. So it is the liaison between the state bank," Securency managing director Myles Curtis said in an interview with The Age in 2007.
Bribery in Nigeria
In Nigeria, the bribery process is yet to be established as at least 3 government bodies including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) are still investigating the matter. The EFCC has also asked that people with helpful clues on the matter could send same to the anti-graft agency.
Last week, the House of Representatives and the Nigerian Senate made moves to begin investigations into the affair.
Halims Agoda, one of the legislators said a committee has been set up:
"To ascertain the veracity or otherwise of the widely reported claims by the local and international media that a company, Securency, is believed to have paid millions of dollars in bribe money to Nigerian officials to secure the contract to print Nigeria's new bank notes."
Securency has been accused of using two U.K based business men, Benoy Berry and Mike Harding, who allegedly are influential in the Nigerian market, to pay bribes to staff of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and government officials during the tenure of the former governor of the CBN, Chukwuma Soludo.
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